Sony Launches 120GB PS3 Slim in Brazil for Over $1000 USD

Approximately nine months have passed since the PlayStation 2 was launched in Brazil, and now Sony has made the PS3 Slim 120GB console available there for around $1,130 USD each.

Believe it or not, that is actually $278 less than originally planned from Sony Style stores for the South American country, as Anderson Gracias explains via Kotaku (linked above), to quote:

"According to Anderson Gracias, division manager of Sony PlayStation Brazil, the original price was to be 2,499 Brazil Reais, or $1,408. In order to stay competitive with the Xbox 360, which sells for R $999 to R $1,599 in the country, Sony is subsidizing part of the cost.

Brazil will get the PlayStation Network in three phases, beginning in 2011 with a Portuguese translation. Then Brazilian content will be added, and finally the service will be tweaked to work with the services available in the country."

Mainly because of taxes. Adding it all up, import taxes alone reach about 100% the price of the product. You put profit on top of it and the cost might go up to 200% the original cost for a specific product.

Soooooooo.... a PS3 sold for U$ 350,00 in the US arrives in Brazil costing U$ 700,00 at least! A damn shame, I know. The most bizarre part of it is that you can buy imported PS3 consoles in Brazil cheaper than the ones Sony will be selling officially, so it's really hard to know why they are even selling it for that price. My guess is they'll be focusing more on the games market, since there is no piracy going on as of yet.

And yes, you could travel to the US, buy your damn console and bring it here paying no taxes, supposing you stay inside the taxation free limit. Shipping it might be risky if you don't voluntarilly declare its value for taxation purposes, specially for eletronics, since it might get caught and you'd be forced to pay twice the taxes plus fine.
So yeah, its very expensive to buy technology in Brazil...